Time flies so fast when we are so busy with our work, family and having fun. Another year is over and it seemed like only yesterday that we just celebrated SICMAA’s 35th Anniversary in 2017.

On behalf of SICMAA’s Committee of Management, I would like to thank all of our workers, supporters, advisers, consultants and certainly volunteers. I know every year we thank these special group of people because we would not be where we are today without them, especially the volunteers.

This year a new group of volunteers came forward, worked around the clock and helped SICMAA out of one of our biggest challenge to date. Our computer and information system was compromised and held ransom. Years of work and our client data was compromised and might not have been able to be retrieved. The ransomware held our computer and information systems and unless we paid the said amount, the ransomware would only then release our data.

This was a lesson learnt that it does not matter how big or small an organisation is or whether it is a private, public or charity organisation, even though ransomware does not discriminate, it tends to pick on the smaller organisations because the smaller organisations like SICMAA, does not have the money, nor the capacity or the expertise to prevent and fix the problem adequately in a timely manner.

Luckily for SICMAA we have many friends and volunteers. The volunteers are experts in their fields, namely IT security, and were able to solve the issue, recovered the data and had our computer system up without paying any ransom. The volunteers faced a lot of challenges, work full time but volunteered their time after hours and late into many nights to get us out of trouble.

Many years we thank and dedicate our love and thanks to our volunteers but again, we want to dedicate this year, not just to our group of volunteers, but all the volunteers around the world who give up their time with their families, lent us their knowledge, wisdom and expertise, and their love and compassion to help another human being to make this world a better place to live in.

Thank you for all your support and attending SICMAA’s 2018 AGM. We hope you enjoy this year’s AGM and have a wonderful Christmas and New Year.